If
God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, then why is there
evil in the world.

For
the sake of argument, let’s concede the harm that humans do as a misuse
of our free will, for which God cannot be blamed (although a good case
can be made that a loving god would have stopped Hitler).

That
still leaves us with genetic birth defects, genetic and acquired diseases,
and natural disasters.

Here
are “The Top 12 Excuses” religious people give to attempt to explain
away the horrible behavior of their god.

(1) Unknown greater
good.

The
first excuse is that God must commit or allow some evil
to occur to accomplish an unknown greater good.

But
doesn’t that limit God’s knowledge and power? Doesn’t
that say that God couldn’t think of a better way to accomplish his
goals other than torturing innocent people?

(2) Evil is really
God’s love.

The
second excuse is that what we perceive as “evil” is really an example
of “God’s love.”

However,
this is a definition of love we cannot comprehend because it is exactly
the opposite of what we define love to be. Therefore we can’t
know that “God’s love” is really love – we have to take
someone’s unconvincing word for it.

If
disease is an example of God’s love, shouldn’t we all try to get
as sick as possible? Are doctors violating “God’s will”
when they try to cure disease?

(3) Evil is needed
to appreciate the good.

The
third excuse is that without evil we wouldn’t appreciate what’s
good.

But
couldn’t a god just give us an appreciation of what’s good?
Why should we have to be tortured to appreciate the good?

Disease
and natural disasters seem like wanton cruelty on the part of God.
Without disease and natural disasters we could still be left to struggle
with good and evil in terms of moral dilemmas and human actions.

(4) Blame the ancestors
and blame the victim.

The fourth excuse is that all evil
that happens to us is our fault, either directly because of something
we did, or indirectly because of our “ancestors” Adam and Eve.

This
is known as “blaming the victim.” Typically, a victim of abuse
believes that the more he or she is punished, the more he or she is
loved.

But
what did an innocent baby ever do to
deserve a birth defect?

And
what kind of justice is it that blames children for the sins of their
long-dead ancestors?

(5) Evil is necessary
for free will.

The
fifth excuse is that without evil we would have no free will and would
be “robots.”

But
what do birth defects, disease, and natural disasters have to do with
free will? Do sick people have more free will than healthy people?

God
has supposedly created a heaven where there is no disease. Are
the people in heaven robots?

(6) The devil did
it.

The
sixth excuse is that God isn’t really responsible for evil in the
world, a devil is.

But
who created this devil? And isn’t God supposed to be all-powerful?
Can’t he stop this devil?

(7) Evil doesn’t
last very long.

The
seventh excuse is that any misery that occurs to us on Earth is brief
compared to an eternity in a wonderful heaven.

So
what? Is that any excuse to torture people?

(8) Evil is necessary
for compassion.

The
eighth excuse is that evil is necessary for us to learn compassion.

But
if God wanted us to be compassionate, why didn’t he just make us that
way? Why this sadistic scheme of torturing innocent babies to
instill compassion in their parents?

(9) Suffering builds
character.

The
ninth excuse is that suffering builds character.

While
building character may sometimes require effort – such as helping
others, studying, and sportsmanship – none of these threatens our
lives.

And
what kind of character is a baby supposed to be developing, who is born
with a birth defect so
severe that she will only live a few days?

(10) God is testing
our faith.

The
tenth excuse is that evil is God’s way of testing our faith, like
Job was tested in the Old Testament.

If
this is true, what sense does it make to impose a “loyalty test”
on an infant who dies from disease or natural disaster?

(11) The Creator is
always justified.

The
eleventh excuse is that God is morally justified in tormenting people
because he created them.

But
this confuses the power to torture someone with the right
to torture someone.

Do
the parents who create a child have a right to torture that child?
Does might make right?

(12) Evil is necessary
to prove God’s existence.

The
twelfth excuse is that the existence of evil proves the existence
of God, that without a God-given
sense of good and bad, we would not be able to identify some things
as evil in the first place.

But
can’t an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving god come up with a
better way to prove his existence than by torturing us? Why not
just reveal himself?

Conclusion: God
has run out of excuses. He is either incompetent, indifferent,
or cruel. Another way to reconcile the facts is to conclude that
gods don’t exist at all.

Additional comments

If
you had the knowledge and power of a god, would you have created birth
defects, disease, and natural disasters? If not, then you are
nicer than the god you believe in. This god should be praying
to you for moral advice, rather than the other way around.

Would
you take a syringe full of malaria and inject it into someone you love?
And yet that’s exactly what God does to people he claims to
love, using a mosquito as the syringe.

We
humans spend a lot of time mopping up after God’s mistakes.
Some say that God works through
us. But the reason we have to do “the Lord’s work” is because
“the Lord” isn’t doing it himself. And if we’re doing
the work, shouldn’t we take the credit?

There
is much unnecessary cruelty in nature. For example, when one male
lion replaces another in a pride of lions, he kills the cubs of the
previous male lion. Yet this type of behavior does not occur in
other species. Thus, if a god designed this system, he is not
above a little wanton cruelty from time to time.

Yes,
many religious people do kind acts of charity. But why?
Too often the answer seems to fall into one of three categories, which
turn out not to be altruistic at all:

1)
To use the recipient of aid as a pawn to bribe the helper’s way into
heaven or avoid hell (or to achieve a higher reincarnation).

2)
To use kindness to convert more people to the helper’s religion, because
religions cannot be sustained by evidence and thus need as many like-minded
people as possible to prop them up and quash self-doubt.

3)
To attempt to maintain credibility in their religion by covering up
the embarrassingly poor job done by their god, by claiming they are
agents of God.

For
those religious people who are kind for the sake of kindness, without
reference to a god, that’s exactly what secular humanism is.

Bible Quotes

“I form the light and create
darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all
these things.” (Isaiah 45:7)

“Is it not from the mouth
of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?”
(Lamentations 3:38)

“When disaster comes to a
city, has the Lord not caused it?” (Amos 3:6)